PCLM-D-22-00044

Fire frequency and vulnerability in California

PLOS Climate

Dear Dr. Hino,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Climate. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Sep 01 2022 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at climate@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pclm/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
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• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Duc-Anh An-Vo, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

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Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Partly

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: N/A

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS Climate does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The paper uses three measures of wildfire hazard and wildfire experience, derived from California fire hazard severity zone maps and historical wildfire perimeters, as well as tract-level data from the US Census and the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s house price index, to study how wildfire hazard and wildfire experience are distributed across tracts. The paper’s primary contribution is to allow that wildfire hazard and wildfire experience may be distributed differently. While this is also considered by Wibbenmeyer and Robertson in a recent Environmental Research Letters paper (citation below), this paper uses a different and longer-term measure of fire experience, and the conclusions based on this measure appear to differ from the previous study. Here, the authors find that while high hazard communities are more likely to be high income, high fire experience communities are more likely to be lower income. A secondary contribution is to consider a potential mechanism: the role of house price appreciation in driving differences in home values across low and high fire experience areas.

This is a nicely done paper on the distribution of the wildfire hazard and wildfire experience across Census tracts in California. The paper is very well-written, and the figures convey the findings clearly and beautifully.

Comments

1. The paper’s analysis is at the Census tract level; however, as the maps in the paper clearly show, Census tracts can be quite large, especially in some of the rural areas where fire hazard may be high. I believe most of the variables used in this analysis are available publicly at the block group level, so I’m wondering why the authors chose to conduct this analysis at the tract level.

2. This is an important issue in part because I’m suspicious that the paper’s main result may in part be driven by the use tract-level data. The authors’ primary finding—that fire experience is distributed differently than fire hazard—comes from their “fire experience” measure, which is a count of the number of fires that have intersected a residential property in the time span of the data. Because Census tract geography is partially a function of population density—tracts are smaller in densely populated areas than in rural areas—tracts are very big in rural areas, which also tend to have lower incomes. It seems possible to me that the finding that areas with higher fire experience tend to have lower incomes may be driven by how the authors are measuring fire experience, and their use of tract-level data. I.e. very large tracts are more likely to have had fires that intersect homes, just because they encompass a greater area, and they are also more likely to be relatively low income. This seems especially possible to me in light of the fact that the authors find a contradictory result when they look at “fire damage”, a measure that is also based on intersections of properties with fire perimeters but does not use the count of intersections.

3. Also relatedly, I wondered about how the low, medium, and high groups for each measure were chosen, and how many observations were within each group. I wondered this, first, because the maps in Figure 1 may be hard to interpret if the cutoffs between groups were arbitrarily chosen (though I would feel more comfortable comparing differences between maps if the cutoffs were based on percentiles, for example). Second, I wondered this because in Figure 2, the high panel of the second column seems to have a small second peak at around $100,000. Since the trend in average median income across none, low, medium, and high is not smooth, I wondered if the result could be driven by having too few observations in the high group. To assure readers that this is not the case, it would be good to report the number of tracts in each group, and to ensure that they are comparable across groups.

4. It did not become clear to me until the discussion section that the exploration of property values was intended as an exploration for possible mechanisms underlying differences in the distribution of hazard and fire experience. As a result, I was a bit confused while reading the paper regarding how the HPI analysis fit into the rest of the whole. I would suggest making it clearer in the introduction why you are doing this analysis, and how it fits into the goals of the paper as a whole.

Minor comment

1. P. 8 – Beginning of first paragraph (“Another way…”) is awkward, please rephrase.

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Reviewer #1: No

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[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

PCLM-D-22-00044R1

Fire frequency and vulnerability in California

PLOS Climate

Dear Dr. Hino,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Climate. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Dec 01 2022 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at climate@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pclm/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Duc-Anh An-Vo, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

Journal Requirements:

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

Dear Miyuki,

Thank you for your revision efforts which much improved the manuscript. There is, however, a minor comment in term of writing from the reviewer that I want to be completely addressed before acceptance. I thus decide to have a minor revision.

Please also make sure you adhere to the data policy of PLOS CLIMATE for the accessibility of the data used including fully acknowledge any third party issue.

Regards,

Duc-Anh

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

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2. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS Climate does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: I appreciate the authors’ thorough responses to my questions and concerns, and I am satisfied with them, with just one exception.

My fourth comment was that the authors’ could be clearer about the role of the property value analysis in their paper. The paper could still be clearer on this point. In the discussion, the authors state: “First, repeated fire exposures, even to small events, may have a cumulative impact on incomes and property values.” This is the clearest statement in the paper of the motivation underlying the property value analysis, and a statement alluding to this hypothesis should be included in either the introduction, the methods section, or both. As is, the sentences the authors have added to the methods section (p. 4, lines 157-160) remain unclear and do not do enough to motivate to readers the reason for this analysis.

Aside from this, I think the revision looks very good, and I congratulate the authors.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

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[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Fire frequency and vulnerability in California

PCLM-D-22-00044R2

Dear Dr. Hino,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'Fire frequency and vulnerability in California' has been provisionally accepted for publication in PLOS Climate.

Before your manuscript can be formally accepted you will need to complete some formatting changes, which you will receive in a follow-up email from a member of our team. 

Please note that your manuscript will not be scheduled for publication until you have made the required changes, so a swift response is appreciated.

IMPORTANT: The editorial review process is now complete. PLOS will only permit corrections to spelling, formatting or significant scientific errors from this point onwards. Requests for major changes, or any which affect the scientific understanding of your work, will cause delays to the publication date of your manuscript.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact climate@plos.org.

Thank you again for supporting Open Access publishing; we are looking forward to publishing your work in PLOS Climate.

Best regards,

Duc-Anh An-Vo, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

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Reviewer Comments (if any, and for reference):